


After Goodbye

by capitalnineteen



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Confusion, F/M, Lost Love, Memory Loss, Mistakes, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-02
Updated: 2020-05-02
Packaged: 2021-03-02 07:41:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23967799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/capitalnineteen/pseuds/capitalnineteen
Summary: She'd found him on the side of the road, left for dead by the gerblins. They'd joined forces to search for her friend, Brian and his boss, Gundren. Now, they've parted ways.And as he watches her ascend into the sky in a strange floating orb, Barry feels a familiar weight return to his chest.(Inspired by the events of TAZ Live Readings' "Off Balance" D&D Live Play campaign - a 'Lup Lives' AU where a voidfished Barry and Lup take the place of the THB, this fic references episode 4 and the events of the proceeding episodes as well as the fic "Lup's Goodbye" which is linked as inspiration. The AO3 of Off Balance is linked from her fic if you are interested.)
Relationships: Barry Bluejeans/Lup
Comments: 4
Kudos: 13





	1. The Weight

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Lup's Goodbye](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23967583) by [Bitsy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bitsy/pseuds/Bitsy). 

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by Off Balance, this is a little more depth to what happens after the conversation at the beginning of Episode 4.

As the orb disappeared above him, rising too high to be seen by his limited vision, Barry sank to his knees, pulled down by a weight he hadn’t realized had, for a time, disappeared.

“Fuck,” he murmured, pressing his hand to his chest. He half expected to find a gaping wound there, evidence that something important had been ripped out and left behind a hole: a vacancy filled with the endless weight of absence. 

He sat back, denim hitting the dust with a thump. Digging in his pocket, he pulled out the coin he’d found when he woke up in the tank. It had been weeks since the thing had spoken to him but he kept hoping it would offer something new or even just repeat it’s original message.

What had it said?  _ “The weight of a love that defined and redeemed you.” _

That phrase had been what made him trust the thing. From the moment he’d climbed out of that disgusting liquid, that weight had been pulling him down, making him feel like he was drowning on dry land. The coin putting a name to it made him believe everything else it had said, because as unbelievable as it was, that was exactly what this feeling was: the pressure of a love pulled away, the burden of inexplicable loss.

And somehow, with Lup, it had faded almost entirely. How had he not noticed? How could he have spent roughly two days in her presence and not realized?

He looked back up at the sky. Not even a glint to show him where she was right now.

Groaning, Barry fell back to lie prone on the ground. It didn’t matter where she was, did it? She was gone. “Moon jail for moon crimes,” whatever that meant. She was gone and he was here doing the last job he could offer to try and help: protecting that cursed glove back there from being touched until someone came back to destroy it.

Barry stayed there, lying on the ground, staring up at the empty sky, flattened by the weight in his chest, the weight that had found him again after a brief respite.

Then he sat up, pulled open his pack, and prepared to make camp. There was work to be done. He had the rest of his life to miss her.


	2. Hot Jerky

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The morning after the night before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was going to be a funny and perhaps slightly petty few hundred words. Instead it turned into 3400 words of misunderstandings and angst. Listen to the Off Balance podcast (or hear us live on our discord every Wednesday evening!) for more. Notes at the end for more info.

He might have lain awake all night, haunted by everything that had happened in the last two days. But, for once, human exhaustion had its benefits. 

For Barry that night, he fell asleep like he was falling off a cliff. He was pulled into unconsciousness fast, hard, and unstoppably.

His dreams were muddled. People spoke to him in unintelligible noises, harsh sounds that hurt his head and set off the ache in his chest. He was following someone he couldn’t see, someone important, and every time he reached for them they turned to smoke.

Startling awake was a relief. In the pale dawn light, he lay in his bedroll, trying to shake off the remnants of the nightmares.

There was no confusion when he sat up. He knew where he was - on the ground, outside a cave where terrible things had happened, near a small, round indentation in the ground where something even more terrible had happened. He knew who he was - at least as much as he had since he woke up in that cursed tank. 

He was Barry Bluejeans. (He wasn’t, his brain said. He  _ was _ , his heart said.) He was afraid of the dark. (Had been as a child and then again as an adult.) His favorite thing was swimming in cold water on a hot day. (He couldn’t swim but somehow that still  _ felt  _ true.) He was allergic to milk, had lost his parents, and had forgotten so much. (All true, all terribly, horribly, obviously true.)

In his chest there was a dull weight, a terrible ache that felt like what he thought it might feel like to approach the event horizon. If he got any closer to that emptiness, he’d disappear inside it, pulled in by inescapable loss. 

And yet, for two days, two terrible, horrible, wonderful days, he’d not felt it. The weight had been there when the gerblins had swarmed and overwhelmed the wagon he and Gundren had been riding in. And then, when he’d been aware again, beaten and bloody and with healing potion spilled over his shirt, it had been gone. And he hadn’t even noticed.

To be fair, he’d had other things on his mind. The stranger (not stranger) who’d saved him, his missing boss, her missing friend, the way he’d fallen in at her side like it was where he belonged, the exhaustion, the gerblins, the bugbear, the lake, the fucking gauntlet, its fucking voice in his head promising answers to all those empty blanks in his heart and in his chest, his utter failure, her despair, their silent walk out of the cave… and then her goodbye.

It was only as she and her friends disappeared in that strange orb that the weight had returned. He wondered if he’d ever be free of it again. Pulling in a deep breath, as if lungs full of oxygen could offset that emptiness, he sat up.

There, beyond the dark blur that he knew was the remnants of his fire, there was another blur. He scrambled for his glasses, hand accidentally knocking them further away, then found them and pulled them onto his face, brushing dirt across his cheek as he managed it.

Lup.

It was  _ Lup. _

What the… How…?

He pulled himself out of his bedroll, the blanket tangling around him like hands holding him back. It was all he could do not to dive for her, shake her awake, reassure himself it was  _ her _ , she was  _ here, _ really and truly  _ back _ . 

Had she somehow gone awol? (Again? That seemed to be what she was saying before, that she’d disappeared from her post without leave to save her friend. But the details were as unclear as the things that had been obscured by the cat-with-a-hairball noises that sometimes erupted from her and the orc that was her … co-worker? Friend? Both? It was all beyond him, honestly.)

He couldn’t care less. She was  _ here. _

As desperate as he was to wake her, to ask how she was here, to ask  _ why _ she was here, he stopped himself. She’d been through pretty much exactly what he’d been through the last two days, but she’d also ended up killing a man.

Killing a man because of  _ him, _ because he’d almost put on that fucking thing they’d found,  _ would have _ if she hadn’t managed to stop him.

She deserved her rest. And when she woke up, they’d talk. 

So, until then he’d keep himself busy. He looked around the little campsite. It wasn’t much. His pack. His bedroll. The dead fire. Her packs, bulging with whatever she’d managed to get while she was gone. And her... asleep in her own bedroll, blanket pulled tight around her in the early morning chill.

She was cold. So, the first thing should be the fire. He kneeled beside his pack and rummaged for his tinderbox. He’d gathered extra wood last night, thankfully, since he’d expected to be here a while, waiting for whoever was sent to gather that fucking thing back in the vault. That meant he didn’t have to wander for wood now, could stay right here and make sure nothing bothered her.

Once he had the fire going he sat back and tried to think of what else he could do. His hands rested on his thighs and he could feel the grit stuck to his skin from scrambling in the dirt for his glasses and then from setting up the fire.

He looked down at himself and felt his stomach drop. He’d been wearing the same clothes for days. There was dirt and blood and … other things… flecked across his pants, healing potion staining his shirt, assorted gore he didn’t want to contemplate splattered everywhere he looked. His face burned. She was over there, tucked in her bedroll on the dirt, looking like an absolute fucking angel, and he looked like the grim reaper’s lackey that was assigned to grunt work.

Sighing, he ran his hand through his hair. Oh, gods, that was bad too. He was a wreck. He must look like the leftovers the dog wouldn’t eat. 

Pulling his pack closer, he began yanking things out, hoping somehow there’d be soap and a washcloth and … fucking running water, if he was going to fruitlessly wishnfor things. 

No luck, of course. There’d been more supplies when he and Gundren had set out but between the gerblin attack and pillaging, the burning wreckage they’d left, and what he’d managed to salvage from the cave… little of it remained. There was the tinderbox, a mess kit, some rope, torches, a pair of waterskins - one full and one half empty after their long morning of hiking the previous day, a few days worth of jerky, and a single spare shirt. Beyond that, there was little else he owned in the world other than his weapons, his bedroll, the clothes on his back, and the fucking creepy ass coin in his pocket.

He sagged back on his heels, disappointed. His appearance was something he was keenly aware of as a disappointment on a good day. This? This was just appalling. 

There wasn’t much he could do. He stripped off the shirt he was wearing, found the cleanest section of it, and doused a fair amount of water from his half empty waterskin onto it to use as a washcloth. The sketchy bath was the best he could do in the circumstances and he did what he could. When he was finished, he buried the shirt in the bottom of the pack to deal with later. He knew he should lay it out to dry but he couldn’t stand the thought of Lup seeing the gore stained thing laying there. He didn’t much want to see it himself.

He spared another splash of water to try and wash his face, then dumped the rest of the waterskin on his head, scrubbing the water into his filthy hair. He’d have slaughtered a few more gerblins for a shower and some soap but at least he felt marginally less … horrifying than he had before. 

That left them just the one waterskin but at least they knew there was water close-ish. Though after the noises they’d heard he wasn’t sure how keen he was to return there. Well, they’d deal with that later, he supposed. Too late now to refill the waterskin with what he’d used.

He pulled on the spare shirt he’d dug up. It wasn’t what he’d call clean. In a previous life he’d have burned a piece of clothing in this state. But compared to what he’d been wearing? It was a vast improvement to say the least. 

With that dealt with he looked around for something else to do. Almost as desperately as he’d wished for running water and soap, he wished for a kitchen, for coffee to make for her, for a different set of circumstances where he could have woken her with breakfast and a steaming cup of caffeine, cream and sugar, two dollops of each stirred in before he handed it to her.

He shook himself and looked at the supplies he’d spread out around his pack. Water. Jerky. That was all he had to offer her. Shoving everything else back into his pack, he looked at the food morosely. 

Well, he’d make of it what he could. He found a large flat stone close by and brushed it off. Another splash of water to clean it, then he tucked it close to the fire and laid out a few pieces of jerky on top to get warm near the heat. It was a long way from bacon and eggs and muffins and toast and pancakes and coffee delivered on a silver platter to her in a fluffy bed, but it was the best he could do. 

After that he picked up his blanket, shook it out, and began rolling it up to stow away. 

“You know, I thought you’d be happy to see me…”

Barry whirled around to face Lup, nearly dropping the bedroll.

“Buuuuuuuuut this?” she said, jutting her chin out at the jerky covered rock, “This is not a thing.”

He felt his cheeks heat. It was a strange kind of embarrassment, though, unfamiliar but  _ familiar _ . “You know what?” he said, trying to match her teasing tone. “Never mind,” he said, feeling a grin spread on his face. “I tried, okay?”

Then he caught it, the unexplained feeling of comfortable teasing that had settled in him. And followed hot on the heels of that, the realization that the weight in his chest had vanished.

Again.

“I tried,” he offered, with a shrug, feeling knocked off kilter in a way he couldn’t have explained in a million years. It had faded a little under the weird assault of feelings, but the smile still lived on his face.

“You did, you tried,” she said, laughing. “You tried, you dear thing.” Her voice, her  _ laugh _ … It felt like someone had wrapped a warm blanket around him. “I brought breakfast,  _ ya idiot.” _

He sputtered, shaken by the sheer  _ flirtiness _ her insult seemed to hold. “Wha… How… I… How did you… I didn’t…”

“What? Did you forget? I told you I was gonna send…” She shook her head, still grinning. “I told you! I said whoever comes down here to get the relic would bring you food and gold!” She laughed and the sound was a musical chime that shook him even further off kilter. “You’re such a dork!”

He pulled in a breath, trying to take in the weird feeling that had invaded his body. He shook his head as well, and changed the subject. “Whatcha doin’ here, Lup? I thought you were … goin’ to…” what had she called it? ‘Moon jail for moon crimes?’ The term felt impossible to reproduce, slippery to even think of. “... the uh, the hoosegow, or whatever.”

“Yeah, well, imagine my surprise when I got a  _ promotion. _ ”

“A promotion?” He asked, confused. 

“Yup, and if you’d come with me to the KRRSHHHSK I could tell you exactly what that promotion was buuuuuuut… you were being a stubborn  _ jerk. _ ”

That tearing feeling in his head hit again, accompanied by that terrible choking sound she made sometimes and he lost track of what she was saying. “Come with you to the  _ what?” _ he asked.

“Come with me to the KRRSHHHSKSHKKK,” she said, then her face changed. “Nevermind,” she said, looking exasperated.

The rest of what she’d said caught up to him. ‘Stubborn jerk?’

_ “How am I in the wrong here?” _ he asked, unsure who he was even directing the question to. Everything had found him at once, knocking something loose inside him. All the weird feelings and confusion and the way his head and chest felt when she made that terrible sound that seemed to set his teeth on edge, and the inexplicable loss when she’d left and the overwhelming joy when he saw she’d returned and  _ still _ there was something in his gut that felt missing and lost and confused and he didn’t even know what to do now that he knew it was still there. 

“Barry?” 

He fought loose of the feeling threatening to drag him under again. That event horizon was still close, even with her here. 

“Hey, Barry?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m not in the hoosegow and I brought you breakfast. Do you want some?”

He swallowed and nodded. “Yes,” he answered. 

She grinned, and he felt bolstered again. He moved to the fire, nudged the stone away from the fire, picked up the jerky, and tossed it away. The warm, dried meat fell a few yards away and he laughed, feeling silly and lost and confused and happy. He’d tried to make a gesture and it had failed but somehow that felt almost… right. Like  _ of course _ it had failed. That’s how this went.

Shrugging to himself, he turned, joined her where she had begun pulling things out of her packs. She had bread and cheese and nuts and fruit. Watching her pull out a knife, begin cutting her selection of food, he felt that weird off balance feeling again, like he’d witnessed this a million times. 

A thought bubbled up through the feelings threatening to wash away, making it to the surface somehow. “Wait, so are  _ you _ the one that’s come back to get the… uh.. thing?”

“Yup,” she answered, popping the P at the end of the word with a satisfied expression. She offered him a hunk of bread she’d torn off and pointed towards the sliced fruits and cheeses. 

She wasn’t on the run from whatever her job was. She hadn’t come back for him.

She was here on assignment.

Dropping to sit beside her he could only respond, “Wow.” He picked at the bread, suddenly far from hungry. “Thought you were.. Uh…” He swallowed and forced levity back into his voice. “Thought you were gonna be doin’ hard time.”

“So did I.” She popped a piece of cheese into her mouth. 

He felt like he was the one who’d eaten the cheese, had somehow eaten pounds and pounds of it. There was a loose, almost sea-sick feeling (though when had he been at sea to  _ be _ sea-sick, he fleetingly wondered) and he was hot and cold and felt flushed all over. He dropped the untouched bread into his lap.

“But! Doesn’t matter! I’m here!” She stretched her arms as if everything were perfect. 

He nodded, affirming the pure  _ fact _ of her to himself. She was right. She was here. Didn’t matter why.

He picked up the bread again. “So,” he asked, focusing on the business she’d returned for. “You got a plan for getting this thing?”

“Well, I was thinking…”

He listened to her idea, offering his own information when required, even joking with her. But a part of his head was still considering things. She might not have come back for  _ him _ but … she wanted his help. He had an opportunity to be around her. For a while at least.

“So what do you say… You and I, break camp, go over to Phandalin, find one of these cousins, come back, get the door open, and cha’gal takes a second shot at this thing?”

He found himself staring at the cave. There was nothing to see there, not for him, anyway. The light from the rising sun didn’t penetrate far beyond the mouth of the thing. Darkness took over just a few feet in. But he knew what lay hidden deep in those lightless depths. A terrible thing - a thing that had beaten back the protests of his mind like he was a blade of grass crushed under a boulder - was waiting in that vault. The thing that had led to Gundren’s death, Lup’s anguish, and his own deep, deep shame. Could he face that thing again?

“Barry?”

He turned, met her watchful gaze. Her eyebrows had pulled together in concern and her ears stood straight and alert. It was like a fist squeezed his heart tight and painful for a moment and he was nearly overcome with emotion. 

She was  _ not _ going in to face that thing alone. That was one thing he was damn sure of. No way would he make her do that without him. “Alright,” he said, squaring his shoulders. 

“Alright?” She asked, sounding unsure.

He nodded, “I think I know where to find ‘em - the cousins.”

“Okay.” She agreed, and sat up straighter, facing him with a steely expression. “So. I want to make this incredibly clear, so we don’t have another…  _ miscommunication _ down the line. We’re in this together, right?”

His mouth was dry. He didn’t know how to answer her. He wanted to scream YES, YES,  _ ALWAYS _ . But that was the answer to a question that wasn’t what she was asking, not really. 

But she wanted his help in finding the cousins, in getting the door to the vault open again, in facing that damn thing that had beaten him so easily, in taking it back to wherever she had gone in that weird floating bubble, in seeing it destroyed.

“Yeah,” he answered, throat tight. The word had come out low and soft. “Yeah,” he repeated, making his voice more firm. “We are.” He’d make sure this time, do better,  _ be _ better. 

“Yeah?” she asked, and that tiny bit of worry in her voice was like a blade through his chest, making him all the more sure he would never, ever let her face that thing on her own.

“Yeah.”

“Cause… I thought I made that kinda clear? The first time? And then you decided to leave with... that dwarf. And that really kinda bummed me out? Cause… I thought you and I had something kinda neat going on.” Her eyes dropped to the slice of cheese she was picking into tiny shreds. “Um, so. Let me just - one more time - We’re in this together. Meaning: when we get that gauntlet back, you come with me back to, you know… where you saw the orb go, earlier. And then we’re in this  _ together. _ ”

Gods save him, he couldn’t even hesitate. “Yeah, Lup. We’re in this together.”

“Cool.”

He chewed his lip for a moment then plunged ahead. She might just be here on business but he still owed her an apology. He knew what she’d thought before but he’d been so sure that she’d be better off without him that he’d allowed all his worry and fear and insecurities drown that out. That he’d let himself disappoint her even in some small way, that required an apology. 

“Listen, uh…” He looked at the fire and decided to try to lighten the mood. “Like the hot jerky debacle, I, uh…” Gratified at her small laugh, he continued with his apology. “I was doing the best I could with the information that I had.”

“I know,” she said softly.

“But, uh, other things have come to light.” He smiled at her, trying not to look as lovestruck as he felt. “I am willing to say… I chose poorly.” He felt his cheeks go hot and looked down, rushing out the final words that he couldn’t hold back. “I’m glad you’re back.”

“I’m glad I’m back, too, Barry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I blame Bitsy.
> 
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